This invention relates to an electric musical instrument capable of assigning desired plural tones to a performance operator such as a pad type operator and generating the plural tones by a single operation of the performance operator. This invention relates also to an electronic musical instrument capable of storing set states of various setting operators for setting tone volume, effects and the like and reproducing the set states by an operation of the performance operator. This invention relates also to an electronic musical instrument capable of performing an assigning operation in a simple manner in assigning desired tones to a performance operator.
An electronic musical instrument capable of assigning desired tones such as rhythm sounds to a performance operator is disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. Sho 61-282896. In this electronic musical instrument, one rhythm sound source can be selected from among plural rhythm sound sources and assigned to a performance operator.
In the above described prior art instrument, only one tone can be assigned to one performance operator and, therefore, the performance operator can be utilized only for a simple percussion sound performance operation with resulting limitation to its performance ability.
A function of generating plural tones by operating a single key in a keyboard is known as the single finger function in the automatic bass chord performance or the like function. In this case, however, a chord corresponding to a depressed key is fixed to one for which the depressed key is used as its root tone and a free assignment of a chord to the key cannot be made. Accordingly, a player must accurately find out a key on the basis of which a desired chord can be produced. Moreover, such function is normally performed in combination with progress of the automatic rhythm performance and, therefore, sounding of a chord at a timing desired by the player cannot be made.
In the prior art electronic musical instrument, it is only a tone source signal of a rhythm sound that can be assigned to a pad type performance operator and set states of setting operators for setting tone volume and effects cannot be assigned to a pad. These setting operators, therefore, must be set at desired set states each time a performance is made which imposes a burden of performing a very troublesome operation to the player.
Further, in the prior art electronic musical instrument, in a case where a desired rhythm sound is assigned to a performance operator, the desired rhythm sound is first selected and, thereafter, the performance operator to which the player desires to assign the rhythm sound is turned on and assignment of the rhythm sound is made in response to this turning on of the performance operator. Therefore, a tone to be assigned is determined definitely when the performance operator has been turned on and, when a wrong tone has been designated for assignment to the performance operator, designation of a tone to be assigned must be made again and the performance operator, must be operated again. Accordingly, the operation for assignment is troublesome and a very careful operation for assignment is required.
Further, in the prior art electronic musical instrument, when the player desires to change an assigned tone by listening to a tone which has already been assigned to the performance operator and confirming the assigned tone, he must first cause the tone to be sounded by turning on the performance operator and then designate a desired tone to be assigned and turn on the performance operator again. Thus, he must make an operation for generating the already assigned tone and an operation for assigning a new tone separately, which is apparently very troublesome.